361 posts categorized "Radio"

June 09, 2011

Paige Wiser is out at the Chicago Sun-Times after 17 years, the last three as its television critic, because her "Glee Live!" concert review in Sunday's newspaper mentioned one song that wasn't performed and described another she did not see.

"I'm at fault," Wiser said. "I do understand what a big deal this was. I am ashamed, and it's just a matter of making bad decisions when you're exhausted."

Wiser, 40, said she brought her two young children to the show Friday at Rosemont's Allstate Arena with the approval of an editor who told her "cute kids' reaction would be more than welcome" in the story. Her son fell off a chair during the show. Her daughter vomited into a cotton-candy bag.

They left three songs later, only 13 numbers into the concert, but her report included commentary on the encore based on information from previous "Glee Live!" shows.

The Sun-Times on Thursday posted an editor's note about the lapse and Wiser's dismissal, and withdrew the review from its Web site.

"Nils is the right person to lead our broadcasting operations," Eddy Hartenstein, Tribune Co.’s CEO and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, said in the announcement. "He’s thoughtful, creative, and has the vision necessary to maximize the effectiveness of the group."

May 22, 2011

Satellite TV trucks were parked around a cul-de-sac in Bakersfield, Calif., last week.

Whatever the former housekeeper of Maria Shriver and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did or did not consent to in connection with parenting the child he admitted to fathering, it wasn't this.

As for the child, old enough to know what's going on, well, no one yet has had a say about their entry into the world, but this is a hell of a way to become the most-talked-about kid in school. The media haven't reported a name, but it doesn't take a lot of digging online to learn his mom's name, find a birth date and picture with the child's face obscured or sundry other details.

And then there have been the reporters, photographers and TV crews keeping watch outside their home.

The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune corporate sister that broke the news of Schwarzenegger's admission, has not identified the woman or even the gender of the child she had with the actor-politician whose separation from Shriver, his wife of 25 years, was announced the week before.

Time Warner's TMZ.com identified Schwarzenegger's former employee a few hours after the L.A. Times story, however. Soon other media outlets, including this newspaper (which ran a report from CNN inside Thursday's edition that cited The New York Times) have made the woman and the age and gender of Schwarzenegger's child almost ubiquitous, despite certain concessions to the fact he's a minor.

If it makes you queasy to think about the kid, the idea of a newspaper sitting on information it had might also cause uneasiness.

So when the floodgates opened, it wasn't entirely clear what constituted high ground.

Obviously, he has an appetite for challenges. Besides struggling to make the best of a changing media marketplace that has undercut traditional business models, there's also Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy case, which has gone on for 29 months and counting.

The May 6 event at the Hotel Allegro also will include a 2010 Watchdog Award for Excellence in Public Interest Reporting, the presentation of scholarships and announcement of Lisagor Award winners in a variety of Chicago journalism categories.

Not Gary Dell'Abate, Howard Stern's much-abused producer and subject of the book.

The other one.

Chad Millman (pictured right), who grew up in suburban Highland Park and has been a senior deputy editor at the magazine, is to assume his new post June 15.

That's more or less moving day for the 13-year-old biweekly, which is vacating its New York editorial offices in favor of ESPN's multimedia headquarters campus, in Bristol, Conn., the gravitational pull of the mother ship proving greater than that of the center of the publishing world.

About this blog

This is an expansion of the Chicago Tribune column I have written since April 2005, and the columns I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles’ Daily News for two decades before that. It’s TV, radio, newspapers and whatever, both locally and nationally. Beyond sharing what crosses my desk—and my mind—this will be a venue for you to share your takes with me as well as with each other. About Phil Rosenthal